DEEPENING DEMOCRACY: Designed to fail

The decision of the Yar'Adua Administration to refurbish the existing rail lines in the country rather than build a new standard gauge double track line is a massive miscalculation that is designed to achieve two objectives. Waste colossal sums of money and ensure that we do not have a functional railway system, objectives that have been sustained by successive regimes for the past twenty-five years.

I sometimes listen to beer parlour analysis where I am offered two reasons why the Nigerian railways has been killed and sustained in the mortuary for three decades. One reason, I am told, is that a powerful cabal of Hausa business men who own an enormous number of lorries and trailers that transit goods, have since the days when Ibrahim Dasuki was Chairman of the Railway Corporation, decided that the railways will never function again. The second reason is that the band of Igbo businessmen who operate what we Nigerians call luxury buses agree that railways must never be revived.

The decision not to build a new rail system is part of the negation of the Obasanjo legacy. It will be recalled that just before leaving office, Obasanjo had signed a $8.3 billion contract with a Chinese firm called China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation to build a new standard gauge double track rail line from Lagos to Kano through Abuja. The idea was excellent but the contract from all indications was grossly inflated. In addition, it was wrong for Obasanjo to issue a massive contract just before leaving office thereby tying the hands of the new administration with a burden that they had not planned or bargained for.

This was probably the reason for the repudiation of the contract by the Yar'Adua Administration, although $250 million had already been paid to the Chinese. The government now wants to refurbish the rickety old line by cutting and straightening the excessive sharp bends that create conditions for frequent derailing and level out some of the sharp gradients on the track.

Government is seriously misguided in taking this decision. First, the line is a small gauge abandoned by most countries except South Africa. This makes the procurement of engines and rolling stock very expensive as the country becomes dependent on special orders from a narrow source. Secondly, the track itself is dead. Most of it was placed in 1933 as second hand tracks when Britain upgraded its track from 60 to 80 pounds weight in that year. As the life span of rail track is 80 years, the whole line has expired and the idea of refurbishing it is nonsensical.

In addition, the railway bridges have become unsafe due to rust, the long period of non-maintenance and diversion of rivers. The decision of government to parcel out the refurbishment to small companies with no track record in the railway industry also means that the desired aim is to fail in bringing back railways to Nigeria and Nigerians.

The massive contracts for the said refurbishment are rumoured to be the future source for funding the rigging of the 2011 elections and the objective appears to be to help PDP rather than bring back the railways. Given the eloquent testimonies that President Yar'Adua has offered on the massive positive role a functional railway system could play in providing cheap, efficient and ecologically friendly transport for goods and persons, it is unfortunate that the vision is being scarified for selfish purposes.

The most reasonable approach would have been to renegotiate the contract sum downwards with the Chinese. Indeed, the Chinese company has a good record of having built railways in a number of African countries. It appears that part of the reason for the inflated contract apart from the usual percentage settlement was that Obasanjo wanted over a thousand kilometres of rail track laid in less than eight years.

By negotiating larger contracts, the payoff is larger. The normal tradition for railway development given its large capital outlay is to spread it over time and proceed from the coast to the hinterland. If the Yar'Adua regime can commit itself to just building the first tranche of the rail line, even if it is just from Lagos to Ibadan in the next twenty months, and the next government commits to building between one and two hundred kilometres every year, we will end up with a modern, countrywide and functional railway system in about fifteen years. Yar'Adua's first tranche will become part of our positive history. Can someone advise the President to get us out of the trap of refurbishing the pockets of PDP politicians in the name of a railway project that is designed to fail?